First there was the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a bill floated in a number of conservative statehouses in recent months that would make it a crime for U.S. government officials to enforce federal gun laws within their state boundaries.

Now comes the Fourth Amendment Protection Act.

It’s the name of a ripped-from-the-headlines bill introduced by state lawmakers in California on Monday.

It would ban state agencies and officials from helping the federal government collect electronic data and metadata on Americans without a targeted warrant. And it would prohibit state and local law enforcement authorities from using such data in their investigations and prosecutions.

Lawmakers in Arizona and Oklahoma are drafting similar measures — all of them based on model bill language crafted by the Los Angeles-based Tenth Amendment Center, the same states’ rights advocacy group that also spearheaded the Second Amendment protection lobbying campaign.

In a lively-worded statement, Sen. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Redondo Beach who sponsored the bill, described it as an “essential” guard against privacy abuses, decrying the National Security Agency’s spy programs as a “direct threat to our liberty and freedom.”

“Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.”
– Thomas Jefferson

My most natural reaction to the simply-put question “Why peace?” is puzzlement. My natural response to the question would be “Why peace? Why not?” How could peace possibly be a bad thing? Then I realize how aloof and self-righteous simple questions and answers can sometimes seem. It is best, as is my normal fashion, to treat even seemingly simple questions as serious inquiries into fundamental freedom throughout the United States and the world. I understand we must be able to demonstrate why peace is beneficial to individuals, nations, and civilizations. So, let’s start over: Why peace?

I think the clearest and simplest answer is “Why not; we have tried war, over and over again, we never win, and the problems we war against only get worse. As the old ’60s song goes: all we are saying is, give peace a chance.” Not only that, but history proves that when there is no war, people prosper. There have been economic booms, scientific advancements, and cultural progress after every conflict American has fought, beginning with our War of Independence.

War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, “War is the health of the state.” War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the state to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running.

On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If war is indeed the “health of the state,” then peace can be nothing less than the “health of the people.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice.

History teaches us that the key elements to prosperity are freedom and peace. You don’t go to war with people you like, or with people you know, or with people with whom you are trading and doing business. Even after our fledgling republic was nearly torn asunder in a civil war that literally pitted brother against brother and nearly destroyed the South, our reunited nation and all its people advanced and prospered after peace was restored.

After both the world wars of the 20th century, there were advances in science, technology, and culture that only ended when the nation again blundered or was bamboozled into war. The post–War War I economic boom saw the increased use of machines and factories for mass production, which made goods faster and cheaper to produce, thus lowering prices so the average American could buy and enjoy them. The Roaring Twenties roared with more than the music and dancing in the burgeoning commercial radio and movie industry. American homes roared with the sound of newfangled, labor-saving devices like electric vacuum cleaners, toasters, washing machines, and refrigerators. Americans not only had more freedom to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but they were also literally set free to travel when the automobile became affordable and part of every American household.

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity — literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some of whom will seek revenge against those who tolerate, finance, and symbolize that government and its policies. (On the specific connection between the Paris attacks and wars of aggression, see my “Understanding the Paris Violence.”)

Obviously, the police in more or less open societies — “but rather less than more” — cannot fully prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery Hyper Cacher. Some or all of the killers, who were known to authorities, reportedly spent time in Syria, Iraq, or Yemen with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State — organizations, let us recall, that were not in those places or did not exist before George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 and started bombing other Muslim societies in his “war on terror.” But travel abroad is not necessary to carry out horrendous attacks. The Internet provides all the information a would-be killer could want to pull off a mass atrocity. “Lone wolf” operations executed by “self-radicalized” individuals are by nature virtually undetectable, even with a battalion of spies and suborned informants or sophisticated eavesdropping regimes. As journalist Patrick Cockburn writes,

Plots and conspiracies, orchestrated from abroad or home grown, conducted by well-trained jihadis or by angry young men with kitchen knives, pose threats too numerous and diverse for them all to be prevented.

If even a full-blown police state could not prevent all such plots, what chance does a society with a vestige of regard for civil liberties have? But that doesn’t stop governments from trying, usually with full public support. The price is diminished liberty as the authorities adopt increasingly aggressive methods. Further, authorities’ will always be tempted to manufacture incidents to justify their heightened alerts, intrusions, and extravagant budgets.

That is why it is imperative for societies wishing to remain more or less open to not let their rulers make enemies by conducting a militarist foreign policy. It really is either-or. As Richard Cobden taught a century and a half ago, security is served by nonintervention and free trade.

This gives the lie to the claim of the war party, the neoconservatives, and the so-called liberal interventionists that making war on the Muslim world is necessary to protect “our way of life.” On the contrary, such a policy threatens our way of life, not to mention our lives. Americans should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001. The French should have learned it on Jan. 7, 2015, if not long before. Contrary to what many people want to believe, history did not begin on those dates. Those who contend that Islamist violence in Europe or America amounts to an ex post justification for Western militarism are playing a dangerous game.

On an April Monday in 2010, Patrick Mettes, a fifty-four-year-old television news director being treated for a cancer of the bile ducts, read an article on the front page of the Times that would change his death. His diagnosis had come three years earlier, shortly after his wife, Lisa, noticed that the whites of his eyes had turned yellow. By 2010, the cancer had spread to Patrick’s lungs and he was buckling under the weight of a debilitating chemotherapy regimen and the growing fear that he might not survive. The article, headlined “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning in Again,” mentioned clinical trials at several universities, including N.Y.U., in which psilocybin—the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms—was being administered to cancer patients in an effort to relieve their anxiety and “existential distress.” One of the researchers was quoted as saying that, under the influence of the hallucinogen, “individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states . . . and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance.” Patrick had never taken a psychedelic drug, but he immediately wanted to volunteer. Lisa was against the idea. “I didn’t want there to be an easy way out,” she recently told me. “I wanted him to fight.”

Patrick made the call anyway and, after filling out some forms and answering a long list of questions, was accepted into the trial. Since hallucinogens can sometimes bring to the surface latent psychological problems, researchers try to weed out volunteers at high risk by asking questions about drug use and whether there is a family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. After the screening, Mettes was assigned to a therapist named Anthony Bossis, a bearded, bearish psychologist in his mid-fifties, with a specialty in palliative care. Bossis is a co-principal investigator for the N.Y.U. trial.

After four meetings with Bossis, Mettes was scheduled for two dosings—one of them an “active” placebo (in this case, a high dose of niacin, which can produce a tingling sensation), and the other a pill containing the psilocybin. Both sessions, Mettes was told, would take place in a room decorated to look more like a living room than like a medical office, with a comfortable couch, landscape paintings on the wall, and, on the shelves, books of art and mythology, along with various aboriginal and spiritual tchotchkes, including a Buddha and a glazed ceramic mushroom. During each session, which would last the better part of a day, Mettes would lie on the couch wearing an eye mask and listening through headphones to a carefully curated playlist—Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, Ravi Shankar. Bossis and a second therapist would be there throughout, saying little but being available to help should he run into any trouble.

January 26, 2015. Chicago. (ONN) Enough is enough – let Dock Walls participate in the televised Mayoral debates. It’s bad enough that independents in Chicago need 20,000 signatures to run for office while Democrats and Republicans only need 500. But battle-hardened independents like Mr. Walls are then left off corporate media polls and purposely excluded from the debates. In response to that blatant injustice, and on behalf of independent and third party voters across Chicago, the Illinois Herald proudly and defiantly endorses William Dock Walls for Mayor of Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune, WTTW Chicago and even the League of Women Voters will all tell you that they only invite candidates to their debates and include them in their polls if they’re already polling a certain percentage. But it’s impossible to poll anything but zero if you’re not included in the polls – dirty trick #1. They may even tell you that they only include experienced candidates, until a wealthy amateur like billionaire Bruce Rauner or Willie Wilson comes around. Then they say money equals credibility – dirty trick #2.

So, let’s get this straight WTTW – the usually unbiased local Chicago PBS station. Being obscenely rich qualifies one to fully participate in a democratic election. But 30 years of experience with Chicago government and politics, including a position as aid to the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, is worthless and meaningless?

That may be WTTW’s position, which should automatically disqualify them from ever hosting a Mayoral debate again. But here at the Illinois Herald, we’re a grassroots, independent news outlet that publishes independent news for independent thinkers and independent voters. And if there was ever an illustration of the anti-independent bias by Chicago government and Chicago media, it’s the blatant exclusion of the only verifiable independent candidate in the 2015 Chicago Mayoral race – William Dock Walls.

OK GOP AG Scott Pruitt is just another big government conservative fighting against freedom

On his campaign website, Republican Scott Pruitt promises that he “will not relent in the fight against the federal government in stances of clear and unconstitutional overreach.” He claims that as attorney general, he has “created a unit to protect Oklahoma and Oklahomans from federal overreach.” He claims to “champion limited government.” (See Pruitt’s comments here.) http://scottpruitt.com/issues/protecting-ok-from-the-federal-overreach/

Yet despite his claims of being a limited government champion against federal government overreach, this same Scott Pruitt joined Nebraska in a lawsuit against the people of Colorado who repealed state laws against marijuana, banning state law enforcement from imposing federal marijuana laws against the people of Colorado. Pruitt now complains that Colorado lacks the authority to pass laws that conflict with the federal government, thus violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Pruitt’s action reflects an arrogant OKGOP that misleads the people using popular libertarian themes to advance its political aims and then cynically betrays those principles when the big government conservatives want to impose their authoritarian ways on the rest of the world. Oklahomans should reject this cynical and foolish legal action, funded by Oklahoma taxpayers, which will end in failure.

While neither major political party lives up to their lofty rhetoric, the OKGOP in particular brazenly disregards the principles of freedom for all people. Those looking for limited government in Oklahoma should disregard such rhetoric coming from Republican politicians in Oklahoma. The OKGOP has become a willful enemy of freedom.

Pruitt’s lawsuit demonstrates how detached the OKGOP is from ideals of freedom and federalism. They just want what they want. They’re big government conservatives who know best. Liberty loving people across the nation should view the OKGOP for what it is, a threat to freedom everywhere.

Why Nullification? Three Arguments | Tenth Amendment Center

Writing for the Tenth Amendment Center, a person finds oneself spending a lot of time and pixels defending the concept of nullification. These defenses generally take the form of answers to two questions. Is nullification a legally valid concept? Is nullification a good idea? The arguments about whether or not nullification is a good idea can often be split into whether it’s a good idea from a practical sense, and whether it’s a good idea from the philosophical sense.In this essay, I will address all of those questions.

First, using a single argument, which I believe is conclusive, I will demonstrate that nullification is, indisputably, a valid legal concept under our political system. Having accomplished that, I will next show that under our foundational principles, nullification is a philosophical necessity. Finally, I will advance an argument that the use of nullification will lead to an overall healthier society.